A Walk Among the Tombstones

Death is a strange thought when the breeze is soft and a late autumn day is warm. Every year it is our tradition as Legionaries to visit a cemetery to pray for the dead. As we walk among the tombstones, rosaries in hand, we cannot but stop and reflect on our own lives and, more painfully present, on our own deaths. In years past it was relatively easy for me to meditate on death while the November days were dark and gloomy, cold and well… dead.  Click for more. It was easy to draw the comparison between this life which fades away like the leaves in autumn and Heaven as an attractive eternal spring after the cold days of a New England winter. But this year was different, November began unusually warm and I found myself wandering a cemetery on a beautiful sunny day. The tombstones had never seemed so frightening, casting eerie shadows on that bright day.

Death always seems dark, but our battle is not with death. That battle has already been fought and the victor rose again on the third day. Death shouldn’t bring fear, because hope has been given to us, the hope of eternal life. Life and death are no longer dueling. The battle now is between virtue and vice, grace and sin, and that is the battle we take part in every day. As G.K. Chesterton famously said before breathing his last, “The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.” Our choice begins now and is sealed on the fateful day of our last breath. Let us follow the light unto eternal life.